ich wipes away every
vestige of republican government in ten States and puts the life,
property, liberty, and honor of all the people in each of them under
the domination of a single person clothed with unlimited authority?

The Parliament of England, exercising the omnipotent power which it
claimed, was accustomed to pass bills of attainder; that is to say, it
would convict men of treason and other crimes by legislative enactment.
The person accused had a hearing, sometimes a patient and fair one, but
generally party prejudice prevailed instead of justice. It often became
necessary for Parliament to acknowledge its error and reverse its own
action. The fathers of our country determined that no such thing should
occur here. They withheld the power from Congress, and thus forbade its
exercise by that body, and they provided in the Constitution that no
State should pass any bill of attainder. It is therefore impossible for
any person in this country to be constitutionally convicted or punished
for any crime by a legislative proceeding of any sort. Nevertheless,
here is a bill of attainder against 9,000,000 people at once. It is
based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible and
found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the 9,000,000 was
heard in his own defense. The representatives of the doomed parties were
excluded from all participation in the trial. The conviction is to be
followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted on large
masses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands and
degrades them all, even those who are admitted to be guiltless, from
the rank of freemen to the condition of slaves.

The purpose and object of the bill--the general intent which pervades it
from beginning to end--is to change the entire structure and character
of the State governments and to compel them by force to the adoption of
organic laws and regulations which they are unwilling to accept if left
to themselves. The negroes have not asked for the privilege of voting;
the vast majority of them have no idea what it means. This bill not only
thrusts it into their hands, but compels them, as well as the whites, to
use it in a particular way. If they do not form a constitution with
prescribed articles in it and afterwards elect a legislature which will
act upon certain measures in a prescribed way, neither blacks nor whites
can be relieved from the slavery which the bill imposes upon the